A bold and timely blueprint to reclaim our personal and collective agency, a critical counter-narrative to the prevailing belief that we live in an age of helplessness, from a Vox senior policy reporter.

You’re Not Powerless confronts a feeling millions of Americans share: that the societal problems we face are too big, and we are just too small. Drawing on fifteen years of reporting, Vox journalist Rachel Cohen Booth details how we came to doubt that anything we do will pay off. For a generation, we’ve been told that the system is too rigged for individual effort to matter, that only sweeping policy can save us, and that if you’re not despairing, you’re not paying attention. Booth argues that this crisis of agency is not just a symptom of what’s broken in our lives and our politics but one of its root causes, and one we have the power to change.

Through vivid storytelling and surprising research, Booth reveals the two mindsets keeping us stuck: there’s go-it-alone bootstrapping on one side, and waiting for the perfect law on the other. Her solution is “connected individualism,” where taking charge of our own lives and showing up for each other are part of the same project. And she shows this isn’t an obscure ideal. Most Americans already believe it, and people across the country are putting it into practice. From neighbors who trade hours of help, to schools that let kids practice independence, to campaigns that have opened jobs long closed to workers without college degrees, Booth spotlights ordinary people building and strengthening agency in one another. Agency in the modern age, she writes, comes not from ignoring structural barriers but from acting together within them and, in time, pushing past them.


Both challenging and hopeful, You're Not Powerless shows what each of us can do to reclaim our agency, and why the larger change we want depends on it.